A £25m high-throughput DNA storage, retrieval and testing centre is being developed.
The NIHR BioRepository South will have the capacity to store millions of human samples in a secure biobank facility and will have the capability of undertaking next generation DNA sequencing of samples at scale.
The facility, which is still subject to approval by the Department of Health, should be transformative. It has particular implications not only for UCL, which has considerable strength in cohort studies, but also for clinicians at our UCLH partner hospitals who do not always have the capability to collect and store samples for future research from the many patients with complex and rare diseases visiting the hospitals.
The centre will move the focus of research expenditure away from building capacity towards better phenotyping and disease characterisation at the front end and enhanced bioinformatics capacity at the back end to capitalise on the data that will flow from these collections.
UK Biobank will manage the facility, following on from the success of their Stockport facility which manages 15 million UK Biobank samples. Premises of 50,000 square feet have been chosen for the new centre which is located in Milton Keynes.
Subject to approval by the Department of Health the facility will be “open for research studies” supported by NIHR and its funding partners by April 2014.
